Cartoon stickers may sway kids' food choices: study

For children who turn up their noses at fruits and
vegetables, slapping a cartoon face on a healthy snack may
make those choices more appealing, according to a US study.

Researchers, whose findings appeared in the Archives of
Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, discovered that when
elementary school students were offered apples and cookies
with lunch, children were more likely to opt for an apple
when it was branded with a cartoon sticker - such as one of
the "Sesame Street" character Elmo.

"If we're trying to promote healthier foods, we need to be as
smart as the companies that are selling the less-healthy
foods," said David Just, co-director of the Cornell Center
for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Program, who
worked on the study.

Noting that cartoon characters and flashy advertising often
don cookie and candy packaging, he added, "The message should
be: fight fire with fire."

Just and his colleagues offered cookies and apples to 208
eight- to 11-year-olds at suburban and rural schools every
day at lunch for a week. Children were allowed to choose an
apple, a cookie or both, along with their normal meal.

Some days, the snacks were offered without cartoon stickers
or other branding. On other days, either the cookie or the
apple was branded with a familiar cartoon character.

When the snacks weren't specially marked, 91 percent of
children took a cookie and just under one-quarter took an
apple.

But when an Elmo sticker was slapped on the apples, 37
percent of children took fruit, the researchers reported.

"There are so many foods that are of poor nutritional quality
and they are being marketed to children," said Christina
Roberto, who studies food choices at the Harvard School of
Public Health in Boston and did not take part in the study.

Kid-friendly characters used for this marketing "aren't
popping up on the carrots and apples as much as they are on a
wide range of foods that aren't good for kids," she added.

Using stickers on fruits and vegetables could be one cheap
option to help improve students' diets, she said, as well as
something parents can try at home.

"It's not a bad idea to create these positive associations,
especially if you're struggling to get kids to eat healthy
foods," she added.